Onesicritus
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Onesicritus, or Onesicrates, of Aegina or Astypaleia (probably simply the old city of Aegina) was one of the writers on Alexander the Great.
At an advanced age he became a pupil of Diogenes the Cynic, and gained such repute as a student of philosophy that he was selected by Alexander to hold a conference with the Indian Gymnosophists. When the fleet was constructed on the Hydaspes, Onesicritus was appointed chief pilot (in his vanity he calls himself commander), and in this capacity accompanied Nearchus on the voyage from the mouth of the Indus River to the Persian Gulf.
He wrote a diffuse biography of Alexander, which in addition to historical details contained descriptions of the countries visited, especially India. After the king's death, Onesicritus appears to have completed his work at the court of Lysimachus, king of Thrace. Its historical value was considered small, it being avowedly a panegyric, and contemporaries (including even Alexander himself) regarded it as untrustworthy. Strabo especially takes Onesicritus to task for his exaggeration and love of the marvellous. His Periplus (or description of the coasts of India) probably formed part of the work, and, incorporated by Juba II of Mauretania with the accounts of coasting voyages by Nearchus and other geographers, and circulated by him under the name of Onesicritus, was largely used by Pliny.
[edit] References
- Arrian, Anabasis, vi. 2; Indica, 32
- Diogenes Laertius vi. 75
- Plutarch, Alexander, 46, 65
- Strabo xv. 698
- Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 26
- Aulus Gellius ix. 4
- fragments and life in C. W. Muller, appendix to F. Dubner's Arrian (1846)
- monograph by F. Lilie (Bonn, 1864)
- E. H. Bunbury, Hist. of Ancient Geography, i. (1879);
- Meier in Ersch and Grubers Allgemeine Encyclopadie
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
